Mornings

There's a delicate balance that needs to be set in the mornings.  So many moving parts, so much pre-planning...  It involves child, husband, bathroom, cats, and, of course, the all-important cup of coffee.

Samantha wakes up early, like between 5:45 and 6am early.  But the cat wakes up even earlier, like 5am early.  Now that's just fine on the mornings that I go to the gym and am out of the house before 5am (haha, fooled you, kitty!), but on those precious other days, it really sucks.  At 5, I'll tiptoe downstairs, the cat racing down ahead of me towards his food bowl, then I'll grab him, chuck him under the baby gate guarding the stairs to the basement, then move the gate down so he can't get out.  Theeeen... I'll tiptoe back upstairs, ever-so-careful not to wake sleeping child (or husband) prematurely, crawl back into bed, and go back to sleep until Samantha's voice on the monitor at the foot of the bed wakes me soon after.

Steve's a bit of a late-owl, so I like to be able to let him get his beauty's sleep as much as possible (since he gets to take over all the craziness after I leave for work).  Once I hear Samantha's awake, I turn off the monitor and then it's a bit of a race to get to her to ensure that she's still dry, and get her on the potty.  However, a few things need to happen first - the cat needs to be freed from his prison, and he and the other cat (who would likely have made her presence known soon enough) need their food (litter box is in the basement with him, other cat is upstairs with no litter box access...I don't like to press my luck any more than I have to, given their advanced ages...).  So I hurry downstairs, free the criminal, feed them both, put the electric kettle on and prepare some instant coffee in a cup (I like instant - so sue me...). 

By this time, Samantha will have started calling for me.  We don't want to have the child lock on her bedroom door for too much longer, but we have to figure out how to jury-rig the metal baby gate at the top of the upstairs landing so the cats can still come and go (trust me, you don't want them howling during the night when they can't come and go as they please!) and the child will be deterred from making an unscheduled trip downstairs (I don't think she'd wander down there, but for safety's sake, since she's not completely confident on stairs going down, especially not when half-asleep, I'd rather there was something basic guarding the path).

I go into her room, still without my coffee, usually, as it was still working hard on reaching a boil when I left it, exchange good morning kisses with my beautiful Morning Sunshine Princess, and answer her inquiries as to whether or not I had a good sleep, then get her into the bathroom where I congratulate her and give her a high five for being dry yet again.  All while shushing her to be quiet and begging her to whisper (ugh, she knows the concept, but refuses to do it when it's absolutely necessary!) so as not to wake Daddy.  After the bathroom, she wants to go back into her room and play, sometimes giving Mommy the fake-out and running into Mommy & Daddy's room to rudely awaken Daddy (he's a good sport, though - who wouldn't be, with Samantha as the reason for being forced awake?).  Once she's back in her room, I have to convince her that I need to close her door for a minute, go and get my coffee, and then come back to play with her.  That rarely goes down well, but I seriously, seriously need my coffee, and no amount of fake tears and whining can stop me.  Does that make me a bad mommy? 

And here I sit now, after having gone to retrieve my coffee, while listening to her on the downstairs monitor playing joyfully with her dolls and her books in her room, overjoyed to have squeaked out a few minutes of personal alone time, just me, my coffee and the computer.  A good way to slowly, painlessly, pull me out of my stuperous sleep zone, ready now to face the morning properly.

And that's just the first half-hour...  The rest of the morning is equally precariously balanced, especially on school days, but we've got it down to a science, and it works.

What kind of daring-do, high-wire balancing acts do you do in your house each morning?

Cirque du Soleil, here I come!